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A rather harsh film set in a very poor farming district of Hercegovina in the nineteenth century.
A farmer's wife bears a daughter, but such is their poverty that they can't afford to support yet another girl; they already have several.
At first the Father decides to kill the baby, but he relents and they bring her up as a boy instead. The film proceeds slowly; the "son" eventually has a period, and another boy is sexually attracted to "him".
The film is in the local language, though the dialogue is as sparse as the local landscape.
The video packaging says that this practice was commonplace, and that the "Virgins" were sworn to maintain their secret outside the home, and of course not to have sex. I would have preferred some explanation of why it was useful to present the young person as a man: if physical ability to work the farm was the issue, then declaring a girl to be a boy hardly improves her muscle-power.
The film is named "Virdzina" with an accent over the z, but html can't render that properly, and the film is usually called Virgina in the West.
HF July 2002
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